Smashed : Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Smashed : Story of a Drunken Girlhood
by Koren Zailckas

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Book Summary Information

Author: Koren Zailckas
Edition: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2006-01-31
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Amazon Remainders Account

Book Reviews of Smashed : Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Book Review: Not what I thought it would be...
Summary: 1 Stars

This book isn't about alcohol abuse, really. It's about a girl from a priviledged family who grows up with lots of friends, becomes a college cheerleader/sorority sister, interns in New York, makes and maintains friendships along the way, and should be an all-around productive, happy citizen. But this girl, from an early age, wants to be a writer. She is especially awestruck by tortured female writers, like Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. I think she assumed that to be a great writer/poet, suffering is essential. Her driving force isn't alchohol, it's the pretense of alcohol abuse because it makes her appear to be tortured. She thinks misery drives creativity. Many great writers/artists are and were indeed lost souls, many with mental health problems. But the author's problems are all self-inflicted. "Look at how much I drink...I'm so tortured! Feel sorry for me!"
The more I read this book, the more I got the feeling that she had created a character in her own mind and was living it out. Maybe she should have gone into dramatic performance instead of writing. I wonder if the feminists she so hopelessly wants to impress with her smug treatment of men, are indeed impressed by her? She is certainly impressed enough with herself, blaming her actions on everyone around her.
I got the impression that once she felt that she had suffered enough, she had a book to write. If you continually choose to place yourself in stupid situations, that just makes you stupid, not deep. If you continually remain emotionally and physically detached from "boys," and play mind games with them, guess what, they're not going to stick around. It doesn't make you smarter than them, just more pathetic. This story is like a whiny love letter the author wrote to herself--"See, you are so tortured and filled with angst, you have suffered so greatly, you are a writer!" Making stupid choices and employing the overuse of simile and metaphor doesn't create a great writer...just an annoying story that is written in an annoying manner.

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Summary of Smashed : Story of a Drunken Girlhood

From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, twenty-four-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes ?the usual.? With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at fourteen, alcohol poisoning at sixteen, a blacked-out sexual experience at nineteen, total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at twenty-two, when she realized she had to stop, and all the depression, rage, troubled friendships, and sputtering romantic connections in between. Zailckas?s unflinching candor and exquisite analytical eye gets to the meaning beneath the seeming banality of girls? getting drunk. She persuades us that her story is the story of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics?yet?but who use booze as a short cut to courage, a stand-in for good judgment, and a bludgeon for shyness, each of them failing to see how their emotional distress, unarticulated hostility, and depression are entangled with their socially condoned binging.

Like the contemporary masterpieces The Liars? Club, Autobiography of a Face, and Jarhead, Smashed is destined to become a classic. A crucial book for any woman who has succumbed to oblivion through booze, or for anyone ready to face the more subtle repercussions of their own chronic over-drinking or of someone they love, Smashed is an eye-opening, wise, and utterly gripping achievement.

Garnering a vast amount of attention from young people and parents, and from book buyers across the country, Smashed became a media sensation and a New York Times bestseller. Eye- opening and utterly gripping, Koren Zailckas's story is that of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics-yet-but who routinely use booze as a shortcut to courage and a stand-in for good judgment. With one stiff sip of Southern Comfort at the age of fourteen, Zailckas is initiated into the world of drinking. From then on, she will drink faithfully, fanatically. In high school, her experimentation will lead to a stomach pumping. In college, her excess will give way to a pattern of self-poisoning that will grow more destructive each year. At age twenty-two, Zailckas will wake up in an unfamiliar apartment in New York City, elbow her friend who is passed out next to her, and ask, ""Where are we?"" Smashed is a sober look at how she got there and, after years of blackouts and smashups, what it took for her to realize she had to stop drinking. Smashed is an astonishing literary debut destined to become a classic.

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